The Beginner Photography Podcast

Photo Q&A: What Are the Best Ways to Protect Your Photos?

• Raymond Hatfield

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#530 Photo Q&A
In Today’s Episode of the podcast I chat with YOU as I answer your top photography questions. You’ll discover the benefits of back button focus, learn how to communicate the value you offer as a photographer, and explore essential backup strategies to protect your photos.

What You'll Learn:

  1. Achieving Depth of Field Without Telephoto Lenses
    Discover practical tips for creating stunning portraits with a blurred background using aperture and subject distance.
  2. Mastering Back Button Focus
    Learn how to use back button focus to improve your efficiency and capture those fleeting, key moments.
  3. Communicating Your Unique Value
    Understand how to articulate what makes your photography special and attract clients who resonate with your style.
  4. Backups and Photo Safety
    Get essential advice on safeguarding your photos from unforeseen events with proper backup strategies.

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Thanks for listening & keep shooting!

Raymond Hatfield:

I've said this a hundred times before on the podcast, if not a thousand times, that photography is not a product. Photography is a service and therefore the better of a service you provide to people, the more successful you are going to be, right? It doesn't matter how good your photos are. If you show up late, your communication is poor, if it's a wedding, you're drinking on the job, all these things that can be looked upon you negatively, it doesn't matter how good your photos are, you're going to be remembered for the service that you provide. Hey, welcome to the beginner photography podcast. I'm your host, Raymond Hadfield. And today we are doing a Q and a episode where I answer your questions. A few days ago, I sent out an email to everybody who has subscribed to the newsletter, asking what questions do you have about photography? And today I'm going to take those questions and I'm going to answer them for you. This series is pretty simple, as you can imagine. I ask you for questions, you give me questions, I answer your questions. Maybe you're stuck with something, maybe you just don't know how something works. Maybe you, I don't know, have a dispute with a friend. Guess what? I'm gonna settle it for you. So if you have photography questions and you want them answered, you can always submit your photos by heading over to beginner photopod. com forward slash Q. A. And submitting them there. So, with that, let's go ahead and get on into today's photo Q& A questions. Okay, the first question comes from George McRane, who asks, besides using a telephoto lens, what is the easiest way to get a shallow depth of field? Alright, so a shallow depth of field, if you're unaware, is where you have your subject that is in focus and your background is out of focus, right? When you typically think of portraits. That's how they look. When we think of landscape photography, a lot is in focus, the mountains in the background, the trees in the background, whatever it is in the background and your foreground, the whatever's closest to your camera is all in focus. And that is because when we're in nature, that's just how our eyes naturally see things when we're looking far away. But when things are up close to us, our eyes kind of naturally blur out the background because our focus is on the person or subject that is in front of us. So we can replicate that with our cameras and that is called depth of field. So to have a shallow depth of field is where you have your subject in focus and the background is out of focus. All right. So, George brings up a good point. He starts off by saying, besides using a telephoto lens, right? What is the easiest way to get a shallow depth of field? Well, shallow depth of field is made up of a few factors. One being your focal length, the longer the focal length, meaning more of a telephoto lens, the easier it is going to be to have a shallow depth of field. There is also. Probably the most well known one, which is just aperture, right? If you set your camera, your lenses aperture to something like an F 2. 8, it's going to be easier to get a shallow depth of field than if you use say F 16. And the reason behind this is, is all purely physics and the way that light works. When you have a smaller hole, a smaller aperture in your lens, more just is in focus. I don't know how the light, photons work and whatever, but that is the physics side of light why you can have a more shallow depth of field with a larger aperture. Now, the third thing is your subjects distance to your camera. So, if you have just the, standard stock kit lens that comes with your camera, usually the aperture range is from F 3. 5 to F. 3 or something like that. You can, it's easy to assume that the depth of field isn't going to be very good, right at F 6. 3, it's not a very large aperture, but you can still get, good depth of field. You can get a pleasing portrait if that's what it is that you're shooting by having your subject get closer to the lens, the closer that your subject gets to the lens, the more out of focus, the background. And the reason is, is because the focusing element on the front of your lens now has to focus in closer. So, think of it like your eye. If you have something in your hand and you are looking at it from about, I don't know, a foot away, everything kind of seems in focus. Reasonable focus, right? So, for me right now, I'm looking at a, a charging cable. And it's about a foot away. It's in front of my computer screen. I see the computer screen. I see my light on my desk. I see my microphone. I see my, hard drives and whatnot. But if I take that same cable and I bring it right up close to my face, just a few inches away, two or three inches away. The only thing that is in focus is the cable, right? Everything else goes completely out of focus, and it is exactly the same with a camera. So, those are the three ways that you are going to adjust your depth of field. One, having a more telephoto lens, you'll be able to have an easier time getting a shallow depth of field. So conversely using a wide angle lens, it is very difficult to get a shallow depth of field. Number two is your aperture, shoot at a larger aperture, say F2, F2. 8, you know, something around there. As opposed to F 11, F 16, F 22. And then the third is have your subject be closer to the lens. So again, having it much closer to the lens, your camera will have to focus on it and then we'll throw out the background, making it easier for whatever aperture, whatever focal length you're using to, create that shallow depth of field. So George, I hope that that helps you. Let's go on to the next question. The next question comes from Daniel Young. Daniel says, if you could explain back button focus and how it benefits. All right. Good question. Back button focus. What is back button focus? When I, okay. This is turned off by default, right? So if you have a camera, that, you know, you're not, very intimately, familiar with, then you probably don't, maybe you've never under, you've never heard this term before, you definitely don't understand it and it's not activated on your camera, but within your camera, if it is a DSLR or a mirrorless camera. Things like GoPros, point and shoots, they don't have that. but again, more advanced cameras will. You can turn on a feature that allows you to use what's called back button focus. And sometimes it's called different things for different camera manufacturers. So if you're interested in it, you're gonna have to Google how to turn it on for your camera. but, let's take for example my Fuji camera here. on the back of my camera, there's a button that says AF on, right? Autofocus on. So I guess before we get into back button focus, we have to figure out how traditional focus works. Your camera figures out focus when you hold the camera to your eye, and then you half press the shutter button that tells the camera, Hey, try to find something in focus before we take the photo, when you half press the shutter button, the camera will focus. Look at all the available focus points, find something to focus on. And then you can go ahead and take your photo with back button focus. It works the same way, except you no longer, the half press button on your shutter no longer finds focus. The button on the back of your camera is what will activate your camera to find focus. So you may be asking yourself, well, now we're just complicating things. Why are we moving a button from one place? And there is a very, very important, reason as to why. So, sometimes you don't need to change your focus, right? If you leave the button on your, shutter button to get focus, every time you go to take a photo, it is first going to try to find focus. Even if the camera hasn't moved, even if the subject hasn't moved, and that takes time. That takes, I don't know, half a second, quarter second, depending on the amount of light, it could take 1 to 3 Even if you just took a photo and the thing that you're focusing on is in focus, it will still hunt for focus. It'll look through the entire focus range, try to find focus. And guess what? Sometimes it will even mess up and focus on something entirely different or say. Sorry, we can't find focus and give you the red box, right? The dreaded red, we can't find focus box. That's the worst. So what back button focus does essentially is now every time I want to take a photo, I have to press the back button focus. So on Fuji, it says AF on, I press that button, the camera finds focus. And now I can take as many photos as I want. And the camera will no longer hunt. For focus. will no longer try to find focus because I told the camera, Hey, this thing right here where my focus box is, that's the thing that I want in focus. And I'm not going to change it for a few minutes. So when would you use this? This is great when you are using, say a more telephoto lens, because when you are, far away, the focus range becomes massive. Right. So it's easier, I guess, the longer your lens, the more likely your lens will try to hunt for focus. So if you're using a really telephoto lens, you're probably not going to be moving a lot because there's going to be a lot of camera shake. So let's just take the example of weddings, right? for, let's just say the, uh, the ceremony, if I'm at the back of the church, right, if I'm at the back of the pews, I'm not moving around a lot. You gotta be kinda quiet. You gotta be kinda stealthy. The couple's not moving around a lot. Typically it's somewhat of a low light situation inside of a, dimly lit, church or, hall, whatever it is. So, you don't need the camera to keep hunting for focus because your distance isn't changing to the couple and they're not moving around a lot. So, you just lock on them once and now you can take as many photos as you want. And why this is great is because sometimes the officiant says, you know, they're in the middle of this long speech, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. All these things are great about, marriage and all this stuff. Oh, by the way, kiss the bride. And then it happens so fast, that if you are caught off guard, and you try to take the photo without back button focus, and your camera tries to hunt for focus, And they're one of those couples who just does like a peck and then they're done. Well, congratulations. You've missed the first kiss, but if you have back button focus on and your camera doesn't have to waste time by searching for focus, then once they go in for it, you just one, two, three, four, five, and then great, you got the photo. You're done and you captured it. So what are the trade offs? First of all, I don't know if you can tell I'm a huge proponent of back button focus, but that's because it fits my photography style. My photography style is I want to find, um, say a good background. And a good moment. So what that means for me is that I typically have to nine times out of 10, I'm not moving the camera when I'm taking photos, right? I'm in one spot and I'm waiting for the moment to happen. If I'm with my kids, you know, and we're at a store or we're just out or we're at the park, I'm standing in front of them. I can see that it's a nice background. I know that I want to take this photo. So I get ready, I activate back button focus. So now it locks on them. And now I just have my finger on the shutter and I wait for an interesting moment, something sweet, something funny, something silly, you know, whatever it is, the right moment. And then once it happens, I can take the photo and then I'm done. I didn't have to wait for the camera to now hunt for focus, try to find it. And then take the photo because by that time I've been burned in the past. I've missed the moment. So there you go. I hope that that gives you an explanation of back button focus, what it is and the benefits. The downside, of course, let's bring this up. The downside is really only during the learning curve. When you're used to just pressing the shutter button, it finds focus. It takes the photo. And then you switch it to back button focus. You can easily forget to activate focus before taking the photo. So sometimes let's just say for an example, say a portrait, you're up close to somebody, you're taking their photo, and then you decide to rotate the camera or just like move back just a little bit to change the composition. If you forget to recheck your focus by pressing the back button focus, then they're now going to be out of focus for all of the next series of photos that you take. So, as time goes on, it becomes easier. You remember it, you're not going to forget it. And, again, all around, I say, a plus I love back button focus. it's fantastic. All right. So again, Daniel, I hope that that answers your question. Let's go on to the next question. Next question we got from, I think it's AZA gray. Okay. AZA says as a wedding and portrait photographer, what is it that you're actually selling? In other words, how do you describe the value that you provide. Ooh, that is a great, great business question. Okay. So I've said this a hundred times before on the podcast, if not a thousand times, that photography is not a product. Photography is a service and therefore the better of a service you provide to people, the more successful you are going to be, right? It doesn't matter how good your photos are. If you show up late, your communication is poor, if it's a wedding, you're drinking on the job, all these things that can be looked upon you negatively, it doesn't matter how good your photos are, you're going to be remembered for the service that you provide. People, generally feel, self conscious in front of the camera. so part of your service is making them feel good in front of the camera, things like that. All right. So what is it that you're actually selling? What are the words that I use to describe the value that I provide? Okay. There's no one size fits all answers to this. Okay. Because people are different. People have different motivations. People want and value different things. I, as an artist, do not want to be the photographer who, shoots, say, high fashion magazine, style imagery, you know, highly put together, things like that, that's not the type of photographer that I am. My skillset, I feel, is in catching, those moments, those glances, the in between things, the things that you can't exactly pose. They just happen and you have to be in the right place at the right time. And because of that, you have to understand people. You have to be able to read them, see what it is that they're doing, feel how they're feeling, and then capture those things. And I do so in an artistic way, right? So I need to find couples who want a similar thing. I need to find couples, as a wedding photographer who want to enjoy their wedding day. I need to find couples who, when they think back to their wedding day, they want to remember the people, the friends, the family, the experience of their wedding day more than the photography. I don't want my couples thinking back to their wedding and remembering that I had them in front of some, I don't know, beautiful. Beautiful oak tree in this beautiful light, but I had them there for like 45 minutes because I was, styling them and the veil and the dress and, you know, got to get the hand right and, bring the chin down and let's wait for the light to, move behind this cloud and all of those things. I don't want them to do that while all of their friends and their family are inside for cocktail hour and having a good time. I don't want to be that photographer who steals them away from the hundreds of friends and family who they've invited. the closest people to them. I, as a stranger, don't want to take them away from that. So that is part of the value that it is that I provide. Look, you're getting married, right? And I want to capture it in a beautiful and artistic way. But at the end of the day, I want you to remember your wedding day and the experience of your wedding day and your friends and family more than you do my photography. My photos are only to enhance the memories of your wedding day. My photos are not your wedding day. They're not to be your wedding day. They're there to enhance the experience of your wedding day. And typically, if my couple hears that. And they say, that's exactly what I want. Then they are going to self select me because their values. that they, value most, they're going to resonate with that, right? Whereas if I tell a couple of that and they're like, okay, but if I give you a list of, of photos that I want of poses that I want, if that's their response, I know right away they don't. I'm not properly communicating the value that I provide to them. They still want to provide me with what it is that they want and hope that I can conform to that in which I cannot. So I hope that that makes sense. There's going to be some people who, only want a wedding photographer or a portrait photographer because they know, Oh, I should, I should probably get some headshots or yeah, most people have photographers at their wedding. We should probably hire a photographer, but they don't value the photography. In a way that others might. So that's what you got to find. You got to find those people and the communicate your value, what it is that you do best to them. So I hope that that helps again, that's why it's not a one size fits all approach. All right. Next question is from Mario, Mario Martinez. Mario says, Hey, Raymond, hope you are doing well. If you could create an image based on the visual inspiration from a movie or TV show, what would it be and what key elements would you bring into your image? Oh man, what are some of the most visually, Interesting, films I've ever seen. That's a big question because, cinema, right? The job as a cinematographer is not exactly the same job as a photographer, photos and video have a very different aesthetic despite being seemingly the same. Um, when it comes to, video, when it comes to movies, when it comes to film production, typically if you just take a frame from a movie, it is going to be much darker than you would edit or shoot a photo of photograph. When it comes to photography, on average photos are, are a little bit brighter. There's a bit more saturation. and there's a lot more dynamic range when it comes to movies. Movies are typically flatter. There's not as much, contrast. there's not as much dynamic range and overall they're typically, darker as well. So, This is a good question. So I guess this is a fun little exercise. I guess what I have to figure out is what is a movie that inspires me and what is a photo that I would take as an homage to it. If I think of some of my favorite movies of the past number of years It would be things, you know, two of my favorite movies of all time are No Country for Old Men and There Will Be Blood which Coincidentally, they came out at the exact same time, were nominated, during the exact same, uh, Academy Awards. And what I love about them is how true to life they feel, right? That's one thing that I love about, both cinematographers, Robert Deakins, or I'm sorry, Roger Deakins and, Robert Elswit is their ability to create, a scene that feels. Like you're there, that can be a very difficult thing because in photography and cinematography, sometimes you want to show off your skills by adding a little bit of extra flair, adding a little bit of spice and, seeing how you can take it to that next level. But, in cinematography, the way that they have created the look of these movies is very true to life. At the same time, they fit the story, they fit the characters. Just because I say true to life doesn't mean that they both look the same. Right? It's not, oh yeah, this is what daytime looks like. Oh yeah, this is what, you know, I don't know, an oil field looks like. they fit the movie. If you put an image from No Country for Old Men and an image from There Will Be Blood side by side, they don't match. But both of them I would, again, categorize as true to life for the movie. Okay? They didn't go over top or anything like that. In There Will Be Blood, I mean, there's the iconic scene, I mean, it was on the poster, I think, of many of the, one sheets, essentially, of the oil, well, exploding with fire, and everybody just, like, covered in oil, and at that point, it's just a waiting game until it goes out, and now you can get all of that oil, and that scene, watching that movie, and watching that scene was, I mean, it was an event. I've never felt more in the moment, like in the movie, than watching that scene right there. Right? And there's something about that. That true to life, transported into that moment in time that was hundreds of years ago, right? It was a period piece. And it made me feel something. So what key elements would go into me trying to recreate an image like this? Let's just for a moment, you know, just as an aside, put away the idea that I would erect this, you know, oil tower, whatever it is, have access to all this oil and whatnot. What sets this scene apart? Apart and what makes it truly incredible is one. I believe that the entire movie was shot on ASA 50 film, which is equivalent to an ISO of 50, go out and try to take a photo at, an ISO 50. There's a good chance that your camera doesn't even go that low, but unless you are outside and unless you are just being inundated with light, it is so extremely difficult, right? And that goes into, speaking to the, the power of, lighting, right. And how you can create a mood around an image. He, you know, it could have easily been shot at ISO 500, right? Vision three, 500 speed film was somewhat new and very popular at that time because of how flat it was, and how workable it was, uh, in post. Could have easily shot it at 500, but he chose not to because it takes an immense amount of control of light. And in that scene, we have two light sources. One being the sun, two being the fire that explodes out of, this, oil well, I suppose. and to be so confident In your abilities because and by confidence that confidence comes from pre planning, right? This wasn't just we showed up one day. Oh, there's a fire. Okay. Now I got to figure this out real quick Let me just run and gun this it took i'm sure months of planning that scene right there to be able to get right and that I don't know I love that. I love when a plan comes together. I love when I can see visually how much effort went into, creating a shot. And when it's done and there's so many people and it's done in a masterful way and it's pulled off, Oh, it just feels so cool inside. So, I don't know if that answered your question. I guess I just described the scene from a movie that I love, especially when it comes to the cinematography side of it. That would be difficult for photography because of the production that goes into it. But, I guess in a more roundabout way of asking about, your question here or of answering your question, I really love when light, composition, and moment are paid attention to in a movie. Those are some of the most important things to me when it feels like it's just running gun and we'll just kind of see what happens here. It doesn't connect with me in the same way that pre planning that, production that, creating that moment, when they all come together the way that that connects with me. So those are kind of the three elements that I would really focus on and really in any movie. I mean, if you look at Wes Anderson, his big thing is composition, right? Composition is so incredibly important to Wes Anderson. If you look at Roger Deakins for him, it's lens choice, it's compression. Those are the things that stand out to me, right? And it's letting a scene develop. Oftentimes Roger Deacons has some of the, I mean, I guess I haven't counted all of the setups in all of his movies and all of everybody else's movies, but it feels like some of the, the least amount of setups. Setups, meaning from a technical standpoint, how many times you need to move the camera to cover a scene. So in one scene, you know, the average scene, if I had to guess, I don't know, might have. 8, 10, 12 setups. You move the camera 12 times and you cover the entire scene before you move on to the next one. With Roger Deakins, I wouldn't be surprised if it was like five, because he has a way of developing the image, but still giving you all of the context, in the frame that is just, I mean, that's why he's the master. That's why he's the master. So those are the elements that I would look for Mario. I hope that that answers your question in a very indirect. All right. Next question here is from Jessica Martin. Jessica says, Hey Raymond, love listening to the podcast, even though at 15 years plus in, I'm not a beginner anymore. How cool, Jessica. however, in some ways I aspire to always be a beginner so that I don't lose my enjoyment of photography. My question for you is how do you check consistency from shoot to shoot? if locations vary, making the light, uh, At different locations appear different along with the different types of clients, different complexions, clothing. I want to work on dialing that in this year, but I'm not sure the best way to do it or even where to begin. Yeah. Great question. What we have to figure out here for you, Jessica is how to define. Consistency. And because if you're shooting, I'll just take myself for an example. If I'm shooting downtown visually, the images are going to look very different than if I'm at a local park with my couple, which would look very different than if I am at a, museum or a movie theater with my couple, right? The photos visually will be very different. But if you look at my images, there is a consistency across all of them. And it's not because I'm shooting in the exact. So. Exact same location with the exact same person wearing the exact same clothes every single time. So there has to be variety in your work. So again, the question becomes, how do you define consistency? And that is what then you can work on. Those are the things that you have control over. So for me, the things that, are a mark of my consistency are our lens choice, the direction of light and composition. And moment really. And then also, I guess the fifth thing would be, editing. So, let's go back to the beginning. lens choice. Was that the first one that I said? So lens choice, I love just shooting, you know, if it's an engagement session and 99 percent of my weddings with just two lenses, an 85 millimeter lens and a 35 millimeter lens. When the majority of your photos are taken at a similar focal length or similar focal lengths, then that is just going to start to build that consistency that that visual recognition in your images. All right. Number two was direction of light, I believe Seeing light, as you know, Jessica, you've been doing this for 15 years is extremely important. So I like to shoot in certain kinds of lights and the type of light that I like to use, is typically from, it's more so from behind, right? It can be a little bit from the side, but I typically don't like to shoot in front light. It's just too contrasty for what I like. And therefore whenever I'm out. And I'm shooting, I am always looking for backgrounds that fit the direction of light that I like. So if I know that the sun is, to the south of me, I'm going to be looking for backgrounds that I can place my couple in that are facing the south. Meaning that the couple will have to be facing north to be looking at me. If you're not good with directions, I'm sorry, that was probably a terrible explanation. but that way I know that the lighting can be consistent for how I like my light, right? And again, now we're just building on these two things. If you just have a similar lens choice and direction of light, you're already like 90 percent there, right? Your images are going to have a very similar fill. The other thing was, I know that one of them was, the moment. Oh, composition and moment. Yeah, composition moment. And then, editing. So when it comes to composition, I didn't realize this until. I went back and tried to look at like all of the photos that I took in a year just to, I was doing this for something entirely different, right? I just wanted to see kind of my, best of images for the year, make a post on Instagram or something like, Hey, these are my favorite photos of the year. And what I found was a pattern that was, I love, several types of images. Several types of compositions. So one being a, uh, somewhat wide shot where the couple is no more than, I don't know. How do I describe this? Like, their height there. If I get a full body shot of them, their height is no more than 50%. Of the height of the image, which means that there's a lot of headroom, right? Because what I'm showing off here is the location that we're in. So they're relatively small in the frame compared to the scene that we're in. I like that. I typically place them in the lower right third of the frame. So if you're thinking of the rule of thirds, I typically place my couple in the lower and right quadrant of the frame. The rule of thirds when it comes to framing. Why do I do that? I don't know. I wasn't doing it intentionally. It just happened. And again, when I looked back at all of my images, I noticed that that was a big trend for me. the other thing is moment. I'll be there with my couple and I will have the camera pointed at them and I will, ask them questions. I will ask them, tell them prompts. I will have them interacting with each other and I will ask them questions that may get them to tell a funny story or, just get them thinking about each other, the connection that they have, the love that they have, because what I want is. a photo of of their connection together. That is what it is that I want to see. So therefore, I may be pointing my camera at them for, a minute or two minutes at a time, just waiting for that moment that, the eyes change, when a smile develops, when a laugh erupts, when they get closer together, something like that. Because the moment is, is incredibly important to me. And then the last thing is just my editing style. when it comes to editing, I love to get my photo as right as possible in camera from exposure, to my aperture choice, you know, the, the composition, all the things I want to get it as right in camera as possible, because I have essentially just a base preset that I put on all the time. All of my images when I import them, and that changes things like, the tone curve a bit. the way that greens are rendered, a bit of the shadow and, highlight detail is, changed as well. And then, the way that I sharpen the image, that way they all come in with a base level of a similar visual consistency as well. And then I just have to make it minor tweaks to ensure that they look their best. So that's it. Lens Choice. Lens Choice. There was another one. Composition. Moment. Editing. Oh, and Direction of Light. Yeah. So, Lens Choice. Direction of Light. Composition moment and editing. Those are the five things that I control that, help bring, give my images a visual consistency, so that, you know, wherever I get, whether again, whether it's downtown, whether it's at a park, whether it's wherever the photos will look consistently the same. So Jessica, I hope that that helps. All right. Next one, this will be my last question today. We are running out of time. We'll be from read. Steinfeld Reed says Raymond to store personal photos. What device do you recommend? I live in Southern California and because of all the events this past week in terms of fires, I'm concerned. I have my SD cards as well as my computer, but I know that there are. small, relatively inexpensive devices to use. Any recommendations would be appreciated. Yeah. Read. First of all, man, my heart goes out to you. I really hope that you are safe in that, you know, you're in an okay spot right now and nothing bad happens. I have a number of friends out there still in Southern California and it has been, horrible. It's been, um, Just gut wrenching to watch, you know, and to hear their stories. and some of them have, have lost everything. it really brings to light that, hey, we have things that are valuable to us. Not only physical items, but also our photos. How do we save the photos? We can't save everything, but if we can save photos, that would be, that'd be good. That'd be great. So how do we store our photos? That is the question, right? Okay. There are several levels, of backing up your images, of protecting your images. But when it comes to protecting your images, there is a 3 2 1 rule, right? The 3 2 1 rule is you should always have three copies, right? You should have the original and then two copies of the data. They need to be two different, media types and then one needs to be stored off site. So, okay. So what does this mean? What does this look like for us photographers? And wow, that sounds really complicated. Why did I even ask this question? Right? I hope that you're not feeling that I'm going to break this down really simple for you. Your images need to be in three different locations. So for me. What that means is that I have a copy on my computer's hard drive. I have a copy on an external hard drive, and I also have a copy on a backup drive. So I have a Mac. So therefore all the photos are on my computer. I also have again, the, an external drive where all my photos go to that I edit. And then I also have a time machine drive, which is just a backup drive that is constantly backing up my computer. So there we go. That's three locations right there. Next is two different media types. So you don't just want to press copy and paste on the photo three times, but they're still all on your computer. If that makes sense, they need to be in, different media types. So again, I have the computer, I have a hard drive. So that's two right there, two different physical locations. And then the other one is to have an off site copy. So, in the past. Before the cloud, really, people would have a backup hard drive. They'd put everything on that backup hard drive, and then they would have a second backup hard drive that they would keep in like a bank vault. And then once a week, then they would swap drives. They'd go to the bank, they'd get out the bank vault. Or they get the hard drive, they bring it back to their computer. They do a backup onto that drive and then bring it back to the bank. You know, that is pretty cumbersome, especially when we have the cloud today. So what I do is that I have, backblaze. I pay for backblaze. I think it's 9 a month and it is the best 9 per month I've ever spent. And I've never had to use them, right? This is just an insurance policy for me. All of my photos on my hard drives. On my computer. In fact, it's not just photos. It's every single file is backed up to the cloud, so it's wherever their servers are now. The first time that I did a backup with 10 plus terabytes, I think it was 15. Maybe it was 12 terabytes of data at the time. It took forever. In fact, I had to call my internet service provider, to, ask for a one month unlimited internet, upload allotment essentially to be able to upload it all, they said, okay. It almost took the entire month to upload everything. My computer had to be on the entire time. but once it was all uploaded, then it just takes. You know, a few minutes or a few hours per day, depending on how many files you upload, and then it's all offsite, right? So again, let's say worst case happens, fire comes extremely quick. You're unable to get the computer or hard drives out of your house. You know, that all of your digital photos are stored on backblazes servers. When you're able to get back into the home, they will mail you a hard drive with all of your files on it so that you can plug it into a new computer and get started right away. But, as another level of security, I have, so I have my backup drive that backs up my computer, but my external drive is a massive amount of data that can't all fit onto my computer. So I have a separate external hard drive to backup. That hard drive as well. So if anything were to happen, I would just unplug that drive and bring it with me. Because even though. Backblaze again, if there was some sort of disaster and they needed to mail me a hard drive, I just want the peace of mind of knowing that I still have a physical copy. just in case, right again, it's an insurance policy and I just want to be as prepared as possible and, for. 200 or 250 for a backup hard drive that's large enough to back up all of my data, that is, is well worth it to me. So that is what I would do. So again, if the worst case happened, you could just grab the one hard drive and get, and all of your files would be on that. So again, I, I hope that that helps read. I'm sure that this is a very difficult time, for you. So I hope that that, helps give you some clarity as far as how to, keep your photos backed up. But, you know what? There's a good chance that if, I mean, if you're very close to the fires, you're not going to have time to go to Best Buy or target or whatever, or Amazon and have one of these hard drives delivered to you. I don't know what kind of computer you have, whether it's a tower or whether it's a laptop or something, but I would. Everything that you're not currently using on a day to day basis, I would pretty much just have packed up in a go bag right now until things settle down and you feel confident and safe. I would take, computer again, if it's a laptop, great. I'd keep it probably close to the front door so that you could grab it as fast as humanly possible. But just try right now to take inventory of where all of your photos are. Try to consolidate them together somehow, and then keep them in a place that's going to be close in case you, you know, you have to leave quick. So, I hope that that helps Reed. And again, I'll be thinking about you and hope that you are safe. So, that is it for today's Q& A episode. I hope that you learned something about photography today. I hope that you learned something that you can implement into your own photography. Whether it be how to add consistency to your images, whether it be how to easier, uh, More easily, get a shallow depth of field. maybe you're going to try out back button focus, or, you know, just how to describe your own photography and the value it is that you offer or how to protect your images in case of an impending emergency, again, if you have any questions for me that I can answer for you, be sure to head over to beginnerphotopod. com forward slash Q. A and submit your questions there. I'd be more than happy to answer your questions on the next photo Q and a episode of the beginner photography podcast. That is it for today until next time. Remember the more that you shoot today, the better of a photographer you will be tomorrow. Talk soon.